


The(y)Them

by Sequesters



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen, Nonbinary Character, Well technically nonbinary characters, all of em - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-11-29 03:23:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20955980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sequesters/pseuds/Sequesters
Summary: The Them learn what being nonbinary means from a certain helpful demon, and subsequently have a lot to think about.





	1. Chapter 1

It all started with a frustrated outburst from Pepper.

Well, that wasn’t quite right.

It had started at the cusp of puberty, when every “she’s becoming a woman” and “he’s growing into a strapping young man!” bothered them in a way that they couldn’t exactly pin down, like always managing to rub a velvet shirt the wrong way every time you touched it.

But even that wasn’t really the START of it.

It all started, it could be said, deep within the recesses of their collective consciousnesses at the age of eight, when upon deciding what to call themselves as a group, they decided on…

The Them.

But, back to Pepper’s outburst.

It was a grey day, and Pepper was complaining about her aunt, who had taken a sudden interest in getting her only niece to become more “ladylike”, much to the chagrin of Pepper herself.

“She hardly EVER visited us, not for the past eight years, and now suddenly she wants me to go SHOPPING for TRAINING bras and the like??” Pepper ranted, as her friends nodded sympathetically.

“She’s_ trying _ to turn me into a perfect GIRL,” Pepper spat, “And it’s rubbish!!”

She tried to kick a rock down the road, but it only slid unsatisfyingly underneath her shoe, nearly unbalancing her.

It was the last straw.

“Urgh!! I just don’t WANT to be a girl!!” exclaimed Pepper in frustration.

“It’s better than being a BOY,” grumbled Wensley.

“We can dress you up as a boy, if you like,” suggested Adam, “We can put your hair up in a cap, and give you a name like…Peter.”

Pepper wrinkled her nose. “No! I don’t want to be a BOY, either, that’s disgusting!”

“Well, if you don’t want to be a girl, and you don’t want to be a boy, then…what other option is there?” asked Brian.

“I am SO glad you asked,” drawled a voice from behind them.

They all whirled around, to see a man—or a being _ shaped _ like a man—leaning casually against a fencepost.

“Hullo Mr. Crowley,” said Adam with a smile.

“Wasn’t he at the airbase?” asked Brian.

“Yeah, he’s my godfather,” explained Adam, “He’s a real-life _ demon _.”

Crowley lowered his sunglasses with a grin, flashing his yellow eyes at the four of them.

“Wicked,” said Wensley in awe.

“Quite,” nodded Crowley, “Anyway. Didn’t I hear one of you…earthly children saying that you didn’t want to be a girl?”

“OR a boy!” warned Pepper.

Crowley raised his eyebrows. “So you’re nonbinary, then?”

“Whazzat mean?”

Crowley smiled. As the serpent of Eden, he could never resist quenching a thirst for knowledge.

And he knew JUST how to do it, too.

-

“In conclusion,” said Crowley, tapping his ruler on the PowerPoint slide, “There ARE in fact, more than two genders, because gender is a sham, and you can do whatever the FUCK you want, both gender AND presentation-wise. And always, ALWAYS, respect the pronouns of others. Now, can I get a wahoo?”

-

The Them trudged down the road in complete silence.

“I think I do want to be nonbinary,” Pepper said quietly, “Would you all…call me they and them, like Mr. Crowley said?”

“Yeah, sure,” agreed the rest of the Them.

“Great,” Pepper nodded, adjusting their dress.

They trudged on in even more silence.

“Actually, this nonbinary thing sounds pretty good,” said Wensley, “I like the idea of being neither a boy or a girl.”

“Now you’re just _ copying _ off me!” accused Pepper, stamping their foot.

“Am not!”

“Are too!”

“Am not!”

“Are too!”

“Am NOT! I’ve always hated being a boy!” exploded Wensleydale in frustration, “Don’t you remember, at Brian’s birthday party when I said that?”

“I thought that was because Pep hit you in the bollocks,” Brian mused.

“That’s PART of it, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I’ve never known why until now, but being called ‘he’, a-and ‘him’, and…’_ boy’, _ just sends SHIVERS up and down my spine,” shuddered Wensley.

“Well, it’s not bad to be nonbinary, like Mr. Crowley said, so you can be nonbinary too,” said Adam, quickly taking charge. Even after the whole attempted Apocalypse, the group still looked to him as the leader and mediator.

“Anybody else want to be nonbinary? You can always change back,” he said.

They all looked at Brian.

He shrugged. “I dunno, I need more than a minute to think about it. I’ll still be a boy for now.”

Adam clapped his hands together. “Then it’s decided,” he said in a declarative tone, “Pepper and Wensley are officially nonbinary, and we must refer to them at all times with they and them pronouns. Now, let’s go eat lunch.”

-

It may have started in earnest with Pepper’s outburst, but it hung in this off-kilter, half-finished state until a few weeks had passed, wherein the group as a whole learned more about what being nonbinary actually meant. Sure they had Mr. Crowley’s powerpoint lecture on the basics, but they also had the _ internet _, where other nonbinary humans hung out and detailed their experiences in blogs. Pepper and Wensley were absolutely delighted, spamming the Them group chat with link after link to nonbinary memes and essay-length posts about gender dysphoria and jokes about doing kickflips with one’s gender, which Adam and Brian (usually) read too. They talked about it every so often, played around with pronouns, and figured out what being nonbinary meant in specific to Pepper and Wensley.

In other words, Brian had had more than a minute to think about it.

It was a rare time, when half of the Them (the they/them half of the Them, by chance) were out of town—Wensley's family were out visiting their uncle, and Pepper had gone to London with their mother for some sort of protest—leaving just Adam and Brian wandering aimlessly through Hogback wood. They walked in a comfortable silence, engaging in the pastime of picking up big sticks and hitting them against the trees until they splintered into pieces.

Brian was unusually quiet, as he tossed the splinters of wood away from him and scanned the forest floor for another stick. It meant he was thinking about something, and thinking about something really hard. Adam noticed, but did not comment on it—he knew that Brian would come out with it on his own time.

“Adam,” Brian finally said, as he examined his newest find, “No offense to the boys, but…I think I’m nonbinary as well.”

“Alright,” Adam nodded. 

“I’m not just copying!” they blurted nervously, “I didn’t want Pep to think I was copying off them. But the more we read about it and the more I think about it...it feels so…familiar, you know? I feel like I’m reading my life story, sometimes, on those blogs. Caught myself, the other day, calling myself ‘they’ in my head, then I figured--better do something about that, ‘n tell you.”

“Brilliant,” Adam said distractedly, fidgeting with a twig he plucked from a tree.

“Right then,” said Brian, uneasily, and they continued on.

It took another twenty minutes of stick bashing for Adam to come out with it, too.

“I’ve been thinking that I am, too,” Adam admitted, “Nonbinary, I mean.”

“Don’t feel like you _ have _ to be, just ‘cos the rest of us are,” said Brian, “You’re _ Adam. _We won’t let you feel left out, no matter your gender.”

“Nah,” said Adam, “It’s not like that. I really think I AM nonbinary. ‘S the only word that would fit all of…” he gestured to himself, “This.”

“How d’you mean?”

“Well, It’s like...how Mr. Crowley is nonbinary,” he said, “All demons are, and all angels too. They just don’t _ mind _ the assumptions that humans make about them.”

Brian nodded.

“I mind, though,” said Adam quietly. “Sometimes, I feel alright as a boy. Sometimes, I feel _ awful _ about it, and I desperately want to be something...else. Always thought that was just the um...antichrist-from-hell part, to be honest.”

“Could still be,” Brian said. “Don’t you read those essays that Pepper always sends? Doesn’t matter WHY you’re nonbinary, just that you are.”

The two of them stood in the wood, sticks forgotten.

Adam sighed. “It’s funny,” they said, staring out past Brian, not-so-coincidentally into the direction where the Tadfield air base could be found, “When I was born, I had LOADS of expectations set on me.”

“You could say THAT again,” Brian mumbled.

“Absolute BUCKETFULS of expectations,” Adam continued, “Seems like everyone in the entire _ universe _ expected SOMETHING of me, based on the way I was born. And so far, I’ve gone against all of them—except for the one where Mum and Dad expected me to just...be a boy.”

Adam turned to Brian, grinning madly. “Shouldn’t surprise anybody to find I’ve gone against that one too, yeah?”

“Yeah!” said Brian, and they high fived.

They played around in the woods in a much lighter mood until the sun went down and they both were called back home. 

They both decided that they wouldn't tell the others through the group chat. They waited until Pepper and Wensley came back home, brought them both to The Pit, and told them the news in person.

Pepper and Wensley CHEERED, slapping Adam and Brian on the back in congratulations, high fives all around, collectively feeling like the Them, the they/them Them, had finally _ settled _ into what they were supposed to be.

“Oh! I got this, in London,” Pepper said, diving into their bag, “Popped into a shop while my mum was distracted. I was gonna _ ask _ if you two were okay with me putting it here, even BEFORE you told us the news.”

They unfolded a massive nonbinary flag, of yellow and white and purple and black.

Adam smiled, and snapped their fingers.

The flag suddenly flew out of Pepper’s hands and hung itself neatly on a flagpole that they could have _ sworn _ wasn’t there before, but sat in just the perfect place for one that they wondered if it really had been there all along.

"Alright, I think we should celebrate by going down to the shops and having an ice cream,” Adam said, an ear-to-ear grin still spread across their face, “But first, we have to make this official: Pepper, Wensley, are you still nonbinary?”

“Of course,” Wensley said.

"Maybe even MORE than before!" Pepper exclaimed.

“Then it’s decided,” Adam said, in a declarative tone, “Brian and I are no longer boys, we are officially nonbinary like Pepper and Wensley, and we both respectfully demand that everyone uses they/them pronouns with us, too.”

“Wicked!” said Pepper and Wensleydale, and the Them walked out of the woods as truly a group of Them.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Them go to Anathema's house for biscuits after coming out to their parents, and discover that they are not the only people in Tadfield who chose today to come out...

“Well, at least that’s over and done with,” sighed Adam, running their hands through their hair, “DEFINITELY could have been worse.”

“I don’t know what ANYBODY expected, really,” said Pepper, adjusting their overalls, “We’ve called ourselves the Them for AGES.”

“In the lit’rary world, they’d call that foreshadowing,” said Wensleydale, scuffing their shoes in the dirt.

“I think maybe it was a bit of a shock to our mums and dads that we all came out at the exact same time,” said Brian, ice cream dripping onto their hand.

“Well, _I_ think it was a GREAT plan,” Pepper said, “Saved us LOADS of coming-outs, and saved us LOADS of explanations on our proper pronouns.”

“I guess you’re right,” said Brian carefully, “But my mum still _fainted_.”

“She’ll get over her cisheteronormative worldview soon enough,” Pepper waved.

“I’m sure she will,” said Adam, “But that’s not important now. We SAID that we would go to Anathema’s house at two o’clock today, and we had better get moving. She said she had biscuits for us!”

“American biscuits, or English biscuits?” asked Brian.

Adam shrugged, and mounted their bike. “I guess we will find out once we get there.”

-

It turned out to be English biscuits, which the Them were not-so-secretly _thrilled_ about.

“Hello Adam, Pepper, Wensley, Brian,” Anathema said, smiling tiredly as the four of them walked through the door, “Sorry we missed your special…get-together this morning, we’re both still pretty jet-lagged from the flight.”

“That’s alright, we can just tell you now,” said Adam, grinning from ear to ear as they threw their arms around the rest of the Them, “This morning, we _all_ came out as nonbinary.”

Anathema’s mouth dropped open in shock.

“That means we aren’t boys, and we AREN’T girls,” said Pepper, crossing their arms.

“I-I already knew that,” said Anathema, mouth slowly working into a grin as she processed what they had said, “I have a couple nonbinary friends. We just visited them, actually, in America. Anyway, congratulations on your new gender—or, lack thereof.”

The tension bled from the Them as they heaved a collective sigh, the light joke about gender a soothing balm on their nerves. The morning’s coming out was a little…complicated, even with the aid of Mr. Crowley’s generously gifted PowerPoint slides, and a few of their parents…well they had said things that sort of _hurt_, mostly out of pure ignorance. The fact that Anathema had prior knowledge—and appreciation—of nonbinary people immediately put them all at ease.

“So…” Anathema said, looking at them expectantly, “Pronouns?”

“Oh, right. They and them, if you please,” said Wensley, while the rest nodded along, “For _all_ of us.”

“Duly noted,” Anathema said, nodding once.

“Did you hear that, dear?” she called, suddenly raising her voice, “These lovely children are all NONBINARY.”

The Them turned to see just Newt’s head, poking into the room from the hallway.

“I-is that right?” said Newt, looking quite uncomfortable.

“You CAN’T be transphobic towards us,” warned Pepper, “That’s the RULE.”

“I’m-oh good _Lord-_I’m not _transphobic,_ I-I’m just…nervous,” admitted Newt.

“Why are you nervous?” asked Adam.

“Well, because…because today, was the day that I was supposed to-“

Newt stepped fully into the hallway in lieu of finishing his sentence, revealing that he was wearing a bright yellow sundress, one that flowed gracefully all the way down to his knees.

“Wicked…” said Wensleydale wistfully.

“Are you nonbinary too?” asked Adam.

Pepper smacked Adam. “Presentation does NOT equal gender!” they hissed.

“No, I'm not nonbinary, actually just the opposite. I’m…QUITE binary,” Newt said, laughing nervously. “I’m actually a…a woman.”

There was silence from the table.

Pepper got up, and walked right over to where Newt was still nervously standing in the doorway, wringing her hands.

“I’m glad you’ve taken my old gender,” they said, taking Newt’s hand in both of theirs and patting it, “I don’t need it anymore.”

It was a strange sentiment, but Newt’s eyes still filled with tears.

“Welcome to the formerly-boy club, Newt Pulsifier,” said Adam, Wensley and Brian nodding along happily.

“Oh, I’m changing my name,” she said, “I’m called A-Andromeda now.”

Brian’s jaw dropped. “Th-that’s a FANTASTIC name!” they exclaimed, voice cracking in excitement.

“Oh, um…thank you,” Andromeda said, looking rather pleased with herself, “I did LOTS of research, and it was my favorite by far.”

“I wanna change my name!” Brian whined.

“I’m _keeping_ mine,” Pepper said, crossing their arms, “Pepper can be a nonbinary name, because I’ve _decided _it is.”

“We can find you a new name, Brian,” Adam said, “I know my mum and dad still have their old Baby Names book lying around somewhere. But for now, we have biscuits to eat.”

And the chatter in the cottage settled into something familiar, but altogether new.

-

The Them all thanked Anathema and Andromeda for the biscuits, and left the cottage in high spirits, animatedly discussing possible new names for Brian.

“Adam!” called Anathema, motioning them back with a hand.

“What is it?” they asked, jogging back to her while their friends continued on.

Anathema slipped them a book, and gave them a wink.

Adam looked down at the book, entitled _Names foor the Most Discerninge Witch, to Nayme her Childe With._

“Might have some more…_interesting_ suggestions in there than in your generic baby names book,” Anathema said, a bit of a smug smile pulling at her lips.

“Wicked,” Adam said softly, and ran off, to catch up with their friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a second chapter already, can you believe it?   
Anyway I absolutely adore trans woman newt, and I took her name being Andromeda from the Orpheus Cure I believe.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
